There was a slight pause and then one of the girls came forward, Susan Prentice, if I remember correctly. She chose a domino and Miss Sayer asked her to say its numbers out loud to the class. ‘It’s a five and a blank,’ said Susan. ‘Good, but we shall call the blank a zero from now on.’
‘Five-zero,’ said Susan. And so it went on, some of the more eager kids getting up for their dominoes and calling the numbers out loud: Four-one. Six-two. Three-one. Four-three. Two-two. Miss Sayer stopped us for a moment here, to explain that the double dominoes were special, and she gave the kid who had chosen it a chocolate bar. Well, after that we were all keen to get up there and find those other doubles.
A few more kids got to choose, until Miss Sayer stopped one singing boy in his tracks. ‘Can anybody tell me’, she asked, ‘which domino this boy will choose?’ That was a question without an answer, because how could we possibly know. But somebody shouted out anyway, ‘Six-six!’ just guessing. It was Paul Malthorpe who shouted it. Remember, I told you earlier there were kids worse than me in the class, well I meant Paul Malthorpe. This was the first time I had ever heard him respond to a teacher’s question. We were friends and enemies, at the same time, in that special way that can only happen at that age. But Paul was tougher than I was, and more popular with the other kids, especially that Susan Prentice I mentioned. She was the beauty of the class. I was more of a loner, I suppose. Anyway, Miss Sayer then asked what the chances were that the next boy would choose the double-six domino. None of us had a clue what she was going on about.
‘OK, how many dominoes are there in a set?’
‘Twenty-eight, miss,’ someone shouted.
‘Good. So how many chances are there of choosing any single domino?’
There was silence for a while, and then a quiet voice from the back whispered, ‘Twenty-eight, miss.’
‘Excellent. We call this twenty-eight to one, and we write it like this.’ She wrote the ratio on the board.
‘It’s just like me dad, miss,’ said Paul, ‘with his horses. Twenty- eight to one, the rank outsider.’
There was some laughter at this, as there always was for Paul. But what really struck me was his sudden enthusiasm. And he’d called her miss, for crying out loud. That never happened! Of course, Miss Sayer was full of praise at this connection, and she played upon it, asking Paul what the chances were, therefore, of the next boy choosing the double-six? ‘Twenty-eight to one,’ Paul immediately answered, proud as anything.
‘Can anybody tell me why this is wrong?’
Nobody could, not for a while anyway, until somebody dared to answer. ‘Because there aren’t twenty-eight dominoes left?’
‘That’s right. Those with dominoes already, please hold them up. How many is that?’
‘Twelve.’ An answer.
‘Subtract twelve from twenty-eight…’
‘Fourteen.’
‘Nearly.’
‘Sixteen.’
‘That’s right. There are sixteen dominoes left to choose from. So what are the chances, Paul, of the next one being six-six?’
You could almost hear Paul’s mind working away as he struggled with the concepts, until: ‘Sixteen to one!’ he shouted.
‘Good. The odds are shortening, as your father might say.’
‘He does! He does say that!’
‘OK. Carry on choosing. Play to win.’
The poor boy we were talking about didn’t get the six-six, of course, and you could see from his face that he felt cheated. I think he was crying, believe it or not. But as more and more of us chose, every so often, Miss Sayer would ask us to call out the current chances: twelve to one, nine to one, six, five, four, three to one, until there were only two dominoes left. It was Paul and I, of course, who had waited so long to choose, still vying against each other, even in the game. Both of us knew the double-six was up for grabs, alongside some measly normal domino.
The class went quiet, that special quiet just before a fight was about to break out. This was another thing Miss Sayer managed, releasing the violence through the game. We didn’t know that at the time, of course, too hung up on competition. ‘Who wants to go first?’ she asked. I thought, let’s get this over with, so I stood up, but Paul jumped in and made his claim. He knew by now that it didn’t matter who went first, but the idea of not choosing, i.e. just picking up the last domino, I think it would have been too weak for him. He sauntered up to the desk, putting his best walk on, picked up his choice, looked at it, smiled, looked at me, just the once, then whispered the numbers to the class. It was an anti-climax, obviously, for me to do that long walk to my designated numbers. I never got to choose you see. I had the leftovers of Paul Malthorpe, but just as I was reaching for the last domino, Miss Sayer stopped my hand.